Dream Interpreting: The Emotions in Your Dreams

If you're interested in recording your dreams in a dream diary — or in interpreting your dreams — some emotion you've experienced is probably the driving force. Every time you express or deny an intense emotion, you can be sure there is fodder for a powerful dream. Though dreams heavy with emotion can be disturbing, they provide guidance about what's going on in your subconscious. Some topics of emotional dreams are:

Psychological processing: You root out fears, pain, vulnerabilities, blind spots, and subconscious blockages so you can become conscious of what holds you back, clear it, and be courageous and free. You may dream about fears of being powerless, in pain, unworthy, unsuccessful, out of control, overwhelmed, victimized, rejected, changed, or of dying or facing the void.

Taboos: You explore forbidden territory, inhibitions, and suppressed desires, often about sex, crime, or antisocial behavior, as a way to free self-expression. For example, a sensible accountant by day may dream of wild sexual trysts by night. You might find yourself acting out secret vengeance thoughts about an unappreciative boss or relative.

Relationship dynamics: You receive insights about how you relate to others and how you give and receive so you can improve your ability to love. This includes learning to balance your internal yin and yang energy. You might dream you are a helpless passenger in a car driven by another, aggressive person, or that you took your obnoxious neighbor a cake instead of reporting him to the police.

Past life memory: You travel in time to revisit memories of other lives, or to clear blocked energy where emotion is stuck. You re-experience, in a dream, a previous death, trauma, remorse, deep grief, terror, or a situation where you had too much ego.

Precognitive warnings: You receive forewarning of sudden change or upheaval: A loved one is about to die, you are soon to lose your job or partner, or the world is about to experience a shocking event like Pearl Harbor or September 11. Or, you are shown an omen to watch for that is a clue to success in a new endeavor.

Out of body travel: You collapse time and space and visit a distant sick friend you're worried about, have a visitation from a dead relative with a message for you, or travel with a friend who's actually in India.

Recognize emotional symbols

With a little practice, you can figure out how to immediately sense the "charge" that's often present with emotional zone symbols. Here are some examples of images that pertain to emotional processes: